Description:
Dr. Jack Van Doren Hough talks about growing up in southwestern Oklahoma, his time in World War II, and his distinguished career as an otolaryngologist.
Transcript:
Interview with Jack Van Doren Hough 9/20/07
Interviewee: Jack Van Doren Hough
Interviewer: Female Secretary to Mr. Van Doren Hough
Interview date: 9/20/07
Interview location: Downtown Library
Transcription Date: 7/22/20
Transcribed By: Alex Hinton
Interviewer (I): Would you please tell me your name, your date of birth, and our relationship?
Jack (J): I have a long name and a peculiar birth date. Our relationship is that you are my executive secretary and we work together in the Otologic Medical Clinic in the Hough Ear Foundation. That reason I say my birthdate is rather peculiar is that I had three of them. I was so unimportant that nobody really knew when I was born. I didn’t find this out until I went into the service and got my birth certificate. On that birth certificate it was September 12, 1920. My mother always told me it was the 10th. So I went home and said, “What’s the big deal here?” She laughed and said, “I guess we weren’t paying too much attention because the doctor said it was the twelfth, and I said it was the tenth, and your father said it was the ninth.” So now, for a long, long time, I’ve had three birthdays every year.
I: Okay, and where were you when you were born?
J: I was born on a farm about a mile and half away from the center of the big city of Lone Wolf, Oklahoma.
I: And did you grow up there?
J: No, I was there only until I was about a year old. Then we moved to Snyder, and then Headrick, Oklahoma. All of those are in southwestern Oklahoma. My father was a schoolteacher and my mother as well.
I: You know, you forgot to tell me about your long name.
J: Yes. Jack Van Doren Hough. “Van Doren” is a family name; that’s my mother’s name. It’s of Dutch origin and historically it dates way back to the beginnings of the country.
I: So, you have four initials instead of three, right?
J: Right.
I: And are you “John?”
J: No, they named me Jack, which is a nickname for John. Again, showing my lack of importance, I guess. I was named after general John Morgan of the Southern Armies. He was Morgan the Raider. He was an uncle back down the path a-ways.
I: What was your father’s name then?
J: Father’s name was Chapman Hough.
I: And your mother?
J: Mother’s name was Hazel Helen Van Doren.
I: And what were your parents like?
J: They were wonderful parents. Dad had a very strong character and was a good man. [He] was a good administrator for the schools. Mom was a primary teacher and taught me in the kindergarten and first grade.
I: Did your grandparents live nearby? Who were your grandparents?
J: Grandparents lived in southwestern Oklahoma, in the area of Mountain View and Hobart. My grandfather was a real pioneer. That’s Grandfather Van Doren. He came down from Indiana to Wichita, Kansas. In fact, he lived on the same street in Indiana - excuse me, in Illinois, with President Lincoln.
I: At the same time?
J: No, his mother knew President Lincoln well. So, my great-grandmother knew President Lincoln. She used to tell me, when I was a little boy, about Lincoln and his son and their life there on the same street. And grandfather then was a real pioneer. He had this burning instinct in him, which we all had. It’s the instinct of wanting to know what’s beyond, just a driving force to find out something better, something out there. So, it’s like climbing a mountain to see what’s on the other side. So as a result, my grandfather made the run into Oklahoma, the original ‘89er run and staked a claim out close to El Reno, but it was jumped on him, so he had to move from that later and made the run up into the Cherokee Strip. That’s where my mother was born, soon after the Cherokee Strip opened. She was born in the sod house and was a real pioneer girl. Grandad moved south to the Mountain View area and Hobart area and was a farmer down there. I remember when I was a little boy, he used to point to those little Granite Mountains and say, “You know there’s buried treasure up there. That’s where the Walden Gang used to hang out. We’ve never been able to find it but it’s out there,” and he’d get this dreamy look in his eye. So they had this driving desire for a better horse to ride, a better field to plough, which of course is a very healthy instinct.
I: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
J: I have two sisters. The older sister has passed away. The younger sister is two and a half years older than myself. She’s still alive and well.
I: I know she done some work in genealogy. How far back can you trace the family tree?
J: Well, we can trace the Van Dorens all the way back to Europe. The Houghs we can trace back to Northern England and Scotland. The Van Dorens came through the north; the Houghs came through the south to this area.
I: Did you stay in southwestern Oklahoma?
J: I was there until Dad was the superintendent of schools there. Then dad took a position in eastern Oklahoma in LeFlore County, in a little town called Cameron, which had a consolidated school that covered a pretty good-sized area there. It was right on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border where Sugarloaf Mountain is. That’s where I went to high school and graduated from high school.
I: Were there any teachers there that had a particularly strong influence on your life?
J: Well I had one that I fell in love with, and in fact we finally had a relationship until fairly recently. I was just a kid, thirteen or fourteen years old, and she was an English teacher. She was just fresh out of college and a pretty little girl. He name was Horton, Hellen Horton. She taught in the school there and I didn’t really see her after I graduated until later, until the Hall of Fame banquet here. She came to that and then became a strong supporter of our ear institute. She was really quite a lady.
I: After high school what did you do?
J: I opened my college career at Southeastern State University at Durant. There I guess I didn’t have anything else to do and going to school was something that allowed me to work and go to school at the same time. I finished in three years, so I graduated from college at the ripe old age of nineteen years old.
I: And what year was that? ’39? ’38?
J: ‘40? I should have graduated medical school in ‘44, but I graduated in ‘43 because of the hurry up of the war. But I worked my way through college and started medical school shortly thereafter.
I: What kind of job did you do in college?
J: Well my dad, I remember was always trying to help younger people get their education and move forward. This one boy was kind of from the mountains, way back in the hills. So he was hillbilly, so to speak. Dad found him back there and said, “You come on down to Cameron. I’ll give you a job a janitor, and you can work your way through school.” So he did, and then my dad kind of sponsored him to go to college. His name was Audrey Kennedy. He was an aggressive young fellow. He came back when I graduated from college and asked me what I was going to do. I said, “I don’t know. I guess I’ll work in the hayfields or something.” He said, “No. You come on down here to Durant. You need to get started in school. I’ll find you a job.” Well, this was in the middle of the Depression. But he did. He found me a job at a little café off campus. This was run by a Mexican man. So, I worked for him as a dishwasher and table waiter for about three weeks. I went down early one morning, and he was gone. He had eloped with one of the college students. That just left me and another young lady to do the best we could with the café, and to help his wife, who couldn’t speak English. So that was my start in college. We finished the summer term and then I was a debater. I went out for the debate squad. It happened that the college was emphasizing forensics more than most schools emphasize their athletic program. They had a tradition of having some national champion debaters and forensic speakers. I went out for the forensics squad and got a scholarship then to be a janitor for the college and work on the debate squad as well. I spent a lot of time running around different places with the forensic squad.
I: Well, I know that you have someone that’s the love of your life. Did you meet her in college?
J: When I met her, I was a senior, just about ready to graduate from medical school.
I: Okay, so tell me first then what made you decide to go to medical school
J: Well, I sort of had two options. One was to go the legal route because I had been active in the politics of the campus. I thought maybe I’d be a lawyer.
I: What party?
J: Well I’ve been conservative all my life. So, whatever conservative meant in those days. The politics was more on a local level than it was on a national level at that time. I had taken quite a number of courses in the sciences and I passed the test for medical school. The rumor was that it was very difficult to get in, if not impossible, particularly from any school except the university. The other was even if you did get in, you probably wouldn’t last. I thought it was quite a challenge, so I thought I would try to do that. I got in and wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a doctor, but I thought I’d try it out, and, of course, that’s where I stayed.
I: You found out you liked it?
J: Then I finished medical school. Yes, I thought was going to be either a surgeon or a neurosurgeon. I said there were two things that I didn’t want to be during my medical school career. One was as otolaryngologist. I didn’t like that, looking down these holes in the head and stuff like that. The other was a psychiatrist. I often said I became one and needed the other [laughs]. I graduated medical school and went to my internship and found that I did like otolaryngology. The staff seemed to think that I had a knack for that particular thing, so they encouraged me to move on towards a specialty in that area, which I did later.
I: So, did you go to your internship right out of college?
J: Out of medical school.
I: Then were you in your internship when you got called up for World War II?
J: At that particular time, they had what was called the V-12 program, which was a program that signed medical students up while they were still in medical school. They had such a demand for doctors in the service that they didn’t want to stop their training. They wanted to finish their training so they could come on into the armed services. And so, they initiated the V-12 program to keep the draft boards from drafting these young guys out of medical school and sending them to the army. For the last year I was on the V-12 program, and as soon as you’re on the V-12 program you automatically got your commission, and you were a doctor in the armed services then.
I: Even before you went to internship?
J: Yes. Then they provided an internship during your first year of service. You were sent to a hospital that had interns. See the hospitals in those days—the big Army and Navy hospitals—their staff were composed of very prominent physicians that they had recruited from private life. So, we got extraordinarily good training during that period of time because of the staff in the hospital.
I: Now were you married when you did your internship?
J: I got married the day before I got my orders to go to work.
I: For your internship?
J: Yes.
I: So then tell me how you and wife met, what her name is, and—
J: Well during my senior year, I met my wife Jodie. You have to get the picture here. There are two social fraternities in medical school. They’re not active except twice a year when they have a big dance. These are very formal dances, tux and tails, a big-name band, and a dinner, the whole bit. In fact, they’re big enough that they can’t have them in usual place so that had it at the Mirror Room1, Downtown here Oklahoma City, across the street down here, is the Mirror Room, which is big enough to accommodate that sort of—
I: You didn’t say where we’re located right now
J: We’re located in the Oklahoma City Library, Downtown.
I: So, this was right across the street from here, in the Mirror Room?
J: That’s right. So, this social fraternity that we went to—my roommate and I were roommates all the way through medical school, and we were members of this social fraternity. We drew straws among the membership as to who was going to go stag, because you wanted a few stags, a few people there without dates, so that there would be movement on the floor tagging in and so forth in the dancing. Fred Taylor and I drew the straws, and we were the stags, so neither one of us had a date. We looked forward to it in anyway because we could sort of increase our little black book numbers and get acquainted with a few girls on the outside.
I: Did you have quite a few names in your black book?
J: I’d exhausted most of them, so I was looking for a good one and so was he. We went to the dance and—now I was a senior in medical school about to graduate. This young freshman had a date. His date came to be my wife now, Jodie. So, I tagged in on this beautiful little redhead. She had freckles across her nose, blue eyes, redheaded, and she could dance like a dream. I looked down into her face and said, “You look as pretty as a speckled pup under a red wagon” [laugh].
I: Did that just sweep her off her feet?
J: That was the first thing I ever said to her. That caused a little break in her dancing step. But anyway, I did get her telephone number. My roommate at the same vision on the same girl. In fact, there were two girls at the dance that attracted both of our attention. At the end of the dance, we went out the front of the place there, and I said, “Well Fred, what did you come up with?” He said, “I came up with these two names.” And I said, “That’s crazy. Those are the same two names I’ve got. We can’t possibly go after the same girls being roommates.” So, we said we’d better just flip a coin and see who gets who, so we flipped the coin and I got Jodie [The interviewer gasps]. And that’s how the relationship began.
I: So, she went with you to wherever you went for your internship?
J: This was wartime, and we were in a hurry. So about three months later I graduated from medical school. We got married. Immediately afterwards I took the state board the next day and then went to my internship in Farragut, Idaho. That was where the big navy base was, and we went up there for a year.
I: Then what happened? What did you do after that?
J: Well after a year, you were finished with your internship. In fact, I had a short residency in otolaryngology while I was there because I felt that it was my expertise, so to speak. So, I had that, and then I was ordered from the Navy to the Marine Corps. I got my orders to the Fleet Marine Corps. From then on, I was a Marine and I went to Camp Pendleton to go through a short boot camp.
I: Did Jodie go with you?
J: Yeah, she went with me for a short period of time and then she went home, and I went overseas with the Marines.
I: Where did they send you? What ship did you go on?
J: Well of course the Marine Corps, Camp Pendleton is their largest training base. I went down there to get oriented as a Marine. Then I was assigned to a division overseas and went overseas and joined that division, and from then on, I was with that division until I came home.
I: What was the name of the division?
J: It was the Fourth Marine Division, 23rd Regiment, Second Battalion.
I: And so, you were attached to the battalion? You didn’t go on down to the squad level or anything? You were just part of the--
J: Yes, the battalion had a battalion surgeon and about forty-three corpsmen.
I: And you were the battalion surgeon?
J: I was the battalion surgeon.
I: And all you’d had was an internship.
J: That’s right. You have to realize the battalion surgeon is with the troops. He doesn’t have an office; he doesn’t have a place to practice; he doesn’t have equipment. He is right with the men on the field.
I: He’s a combat surgeon.
J: He’s a combat surgeon, a first aid man, and a director of the injured, so to speak. The corpsmen were the injured. We didn’t wear an insignia because we didn’t want the Japanese to know who the doctor was or who the corpsmen were, because that was a good target for them.
I: So, you were in the Pacific?
J: Yeah.
I: Did you stay on a ship the whole time?
J: No, the Battle of Iwo Jima came shortly afterward, after I had joined the division. I was in the Battle of Iwo Jima.
I: Let’s talk about that a little bit. So, you actually went ashore with the troops on Iwo Jima?
J: That’s right. I was on the first wave.
I: Can you remember much about that? Can you tell me anything about your experience in that?
J: Well of course you’d never get something like that out of your mind. It was a horrific experience. We lined up this big armada of American troops offshore. We were to take this island, which of course was heavily fortified, kind of like Gibraltar. The beaches were such that it was like an amphitheater. The mountains beyond were in a sort of a circle around the beaches that we had to land on, and that’s where they had their big guns under the ground. There were around 30,000 Japanese that were occupying Iwo Jima as their prized fort, so to speak. They were all underground; you couldn’t see anything above ground. They’d pull their guns out of the trenches through the holes in the walls and then fire and pull them back in. You couldn’t tell where they were coming from, of course. But they were looking down on us like an amphitheater. We invaded the beach and tried to take the high places as quickly as we could because we were in such a vulnerable position.
I: How far into the island did you get? Did you stay on the beach the whole time or were you up on the hill?
J: No, my being in the assault wave—the assault unit remained the assault unit. We were constantly warned we mustn’t stay on the beach. We must move forward as fast as we could and take the island as quickly as we could. Of course, that was a lot easier said than done. We had these terraces, real high terraces, that we to go up and over in order to get finally up to the airport, which was a flat area, an airstrip flattened on top of the island. That’s what we wanted to take so that our bombers could land there that were bombing Japan. The assault wave, we had to encourage our troops to move on, even to leave their wounded. It was difficult sometimes to leave a person who was wounded, but not seriously, but leave them laying on the beach and move on. But you had to do that and let the troops come in later and move them off the beach. So we finally took the high ground, both Mount Suribachi and the other hill on the other end. It wasn’t a peak, like Suribachi, but was a rounded hill, Hill 382. It was the most difficult to take, incidentally.
I: Which side of the island were you on, you yourself?
J: It was on the west side of the island. Was that what you mean?
I: Yeah, were you on the west side of the island or the east side?
J: The west side was the only side you could invade.
I: Okay, so you invaded from the west.
J: And you had to take the high ground which was the circle from north to east to south.
I: Okay, but were you involved in taking Suribachi or Hill 382?
J: We were in the center of the attack when we moved on through the island. We were the center of the attack. The Fifth Division was on our left, which was the one that took Suribachi. The Second were on our right, but we were in the center, so we were to move forward to take the air strip as quickly as we could. We did, and then turned south to take Hill 382.
I: Which was the most difficult part of the --
J: That was the most...
I: More difficult than Suribachi?
J: Yes, that’s right.
I: And I know that’s where you won the Bronze Star. How did you come to get that?
J: Well, I’d have to say, probably a fluke, so many others deserved it more than I did. That’s not humility speaking but truth. Of course, I was on the beach with troops all the way through and there was a lot of things that I had to do that required exposure and required little concern for what you were doing, forced you to move. I think a lot of times you do things by habit, but you also do things by impulse that you know was right and should be done and so you do it. It wasn’t that you weren’t afraid or had any particular gallantry. You just did it because it needed to be done.
I: I think you told me one time you know what the medal says that you did, but you can’t remember exactly doing it. Is that right?
J: Well, the medal talked about me running in the open getting the wounded and evacuating them under fire and all this, but the beach was under tremendous fire. Mortar and artillery were raining down on us tremendously. We had those big guns made holes in the ground that were ten or fifteen feet deep so there are shell holes all over the place. You’d run from one shell hole to the other. It was amazing how your instincts work and how your thought processes are. I was afraid just like anybody. I was scared stiff. Everybody was. It’s amazing how it affects some people. It affected me by making me sleepy. I had to fight to stay awake and all hell was breaking loose all around me and I had to make myself stay alert and stay awake. Of course, they all had helmets, but that’s the only protection we had. We didn’t have bullet proof vests or anything like that. So, you sort of think, “This is made out of steel. It will protect me from shrapnel or something.” You almost feel like you could crawl under your helmet and be like a turtle. You snuggle down in the sand, and the sand was extremely soft. Dig yourself in as much as you can, as quick as you can, and you hate to leave that place particularly if you’re not getting as much gunfire as other places. You look out here in front of you and those places are getting smothered with gunfire and people in those shell holes are getting killed by the dozens. You don’t wanna have to move into that, and yet something compels you to, almost as though you were lifted by a hand, pushed and lifted out of that shell hole to go jump into this one that looks like an inferno, and only look back and see that shell hole that you were in, that would love to have stayed in, just blow sky high and everybody in it was killed. So that went on hour after hour, day after day. That kind of explosion on the beach and up on the slopes to the airfield.
I: So, the medal was really for a lot of different times that you risked your life and not just one specific instance.
J: Not just one shot, no. It was the whole thing. Of course, I know that hand that was moving me was God Himself because He wanted me alive for some reason.
I: Well, I know you’re a Christian. Were you a Christian at the time?
J: I was, but I would say the personal encounter was so strong, that that was the event of my life that I met the Lord in a personal way. Over and over and over again, I was miraculously saved. I had the pack blown off my back and all kinds of stuff, and I left the battle with no scratches. I saw the flag go up on Suribachi. We were down at the other end on 382 and I saw that through my binoculars. Of course, that was on the latter part of the battle. We didn’t recognize the significance of that. Of course, it created a thrill to see our flag go up, but when I look back at the Battle of Iwo Jima, the most important part about it was the patriotism that was displayed and the symbol of freedom that photograph shows which will be used from now on. The history of America and its freedom will be shown by the raising of that flag.
I: And you were a witness to that?
J: Yeah, and I happened to be able to see it.
I: Okay, well then let’s go on to when you got back. I mean, were there other battles after Iwo Jima, or was that the only action you were in. That would be enough.
J: No, actually—Iwo Jima, the other thing it did, it broke the heart of the Japanese people, because if Iwo Jima could fall there was no protection. They knew that we would be able to take anything. They knew that the war was over, and so shortly thereafter was when they surrendered. That was just a moral lesson, an object lesson, for the Japanese, and the Americans as well because many of the generals and admirals thought we couldn’t take it. General MacArthur said he would not invade it. He said it was too costly.
I: Who was the commanding general for that battle?
J: It was [he considers]. “Who,” you asked me…
I: It’s not important. The history books have that information.
J: Howlin’ Mad Smith2. I believe that’s who it was, yeah.
I: His name’s not that well known to have done something that important.
J: No, it isn’t well known.
I: Tell me about your homecoming then, when you came back.
J: Well, I came home, and they assigned me to Bethesda.
I: Okay, but I mean how did you feel when you first saw Jodie? Where did you meet her? How long was it before you saw her? That sort of thing.
H: Well, I came back aboard a small aircraft carrier. We landed in San Diego and my battalion was chosen to honor a battalion of the Marine Corps, to make a parade up in Los Angeles. So, we were welcomed with a lot of enthusiasm. We landed in San Diego, and went to the hotel room, and there was a guy working on the doors. I kicked him out immediately. [laughs]
I: Oh, ‘cause Jodie was there [laughs].
J: ‘Cause Jodie was there. So, the romance began all over again. Then I was assigned to Bethesda, the Navy hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
I: I can’t remember. Was your older son born before you got back?
J: My oldest son was born while I was in the Battle of Iwo Jima. So at least it was a diversion of my thought processes because she was in labor while I was in the battle.
I: And you knew that?
J: I knew that, but I didn’t know what was happening, and likewise she didn’t know what was happening to me. In fact, my folks got the condolences that I was killed. The battle was so vicious that we lost, my battalion and my division, lost ninety percent the first two days. So, they thought I was not going to come home.
I: So, you had another birthday, when they found out you were alive.
J: That’s right.
I: And then I think you had another birthday that you consider your spiritual birthday. Can you tell me a little about that, or was that Iwo Jima?
J: Of course, as I said, I was a Christian.
I: Okay, what makes you say that?
J: Well, when I was about twelve years old, we were in the little town of Headrick, Oklahoma here. We had a revival meeting in the summertime. Old Brother Salter was the district superintendent of the Methodist Church and he put on the revival. It was in the Methodist Church there and it was in August, so it was hot. They had the regular revival during the week, and during that period of time I had decided that I needed to give my life to Christ. I had looked out across those prairies down there, those beautiful little granite mountains popping up out of the prairie, and I knew in my heart that this didn’t all happen by chance, that there was a big hand directing the whole affair. I believed it was Jesus, and so I decided that I should give my life to Him, so I did. You say, well that was just a little kid’s whim. The reason I know I was serious was, on Sunday when the revival ended, the preacher said, “Now all you people that have given your life to Christ, I want you to come forward for the baptism.” So, we all went up to the front of the church. This being a Methodist church, he went down the line and said, “Do you wanna be sprinkled or do you wanna be immersed?” I think there were about twelve or fifteen of these people and they were all adults except me. When he got to me— I was on the end of the line—he got to me and I said, “immersed.” He said, “You wanna be what?” I said, “I wanna be immersed.” He said, “Son, do you know what that means?” I said, “Yeah, I think I do. It means to go all the way under.” Well, the Methodists didn’t have a baptistry and Baptists weren’t going to loan them theirs. So, we all got in our T Model Fords and drove out about a couple miles out of town to where there was a stock pond. I was baptized in the stock pond because I had insisted on immersion. He put me under three times, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As funny as that sounds, as crazy as it sounds, I know that there’s a perfect example of somebody who really meant what they were doing. So, I think that would have to be my spiritual birth. There’s another one or two that would be counted as birth, or reaffirmation and renewal.
I: And one of those was here in Oklahoma City in 1956? Or no? Or what would you call the Billy Graham Crusade that came here in ‘56.
J: Well, the Billy Graham Crusade. We were member of the Presbyterian Church here and they asked to have counselors trained. The church appointed certain people to go be trained for counselors and Jodie and I were among those. So about six months before the crusade we were trained as counselors. We were introduced to the quiet time where we spend time with the Lord to begin the day, read the Bible and pray. This is another perhaps lengthy story that you don’t want to hear all of, but it really revolutionized our home and my own life. That would be a turning point.
I: Yeah, I do want to hear about it sometime, but today let’s talk a little bit more about your medical. Tell me a little bit more about how you ended up being an ear surgeon instead of just an otolaryngologist and how you got interested in that.
J: It’s strange. As I said, sometimes God leads you to do things that you didn’t think you wanted to do. For instance, I didn’t want to be an otolaryngologist; I wanted to be a general surgeon or neurosurgeon, and yet I turned out to be an otolaryngologist. I didn’t want to be—among all the things about the head and neck, the ear was the thing that I wasn’t as particularly interested in as I was other things. So, I found myself being an ear surgeon and finding that I liked it more than anything else. The trail of that is as interesting. If you respond to what you’re directed to, it turns out to be something better than what you had planned. But I started out in general laryngology and was trained and received my boards in general laryngology and neck surgery and did a lot of that. The fellow that I worked with, Joe McDonald, was one of the outstanding general laryngologists. I came to Oklahoma City right after the war and there were no young otolaryngologists. All of them were very busy and didn’t have time to take on some of the new things that needed to be done. Joe McDonald used to tell me always, “Look and see what the people need. See what is not being done for them and see if you can do it.” No one was doing any of the modern surgical procedures to restore hearing, and no one was doing radical neck dissections for cancer and things of this nature. I began training myself, one way or another, to do those things. I would take short fellowship programs in different places to learn certain things. From that standpoint of the year, I went to St. Louis and spent a triple fellowship in otology with one of the world’s outstanding otologists and became trained in ear surgery. About that time, we were beginning to utilize the microscope, and so I introduced the use of the microscope here in this area. In fact, west of Mississippi, I think I may have had the only one. So, we begin to do middle ear surgery, microscopic surgery, and see things that needed to be done, and try things that would work to restore hearing. My practice suddenly became ears only, because people who needed ear surgery far outweighed anybody else, and I was able to get some of the other general otolaryngologists to do some of the other work that I was doing.
I: When you were in Washington University, was that the first time you ever really—it seems to me like you said they had a loop or something where you could see in the ear better than you ever had before. Tell me how you felt about that.
J: Yes, we were able to do ear surgery without microscopic vision, but it was done poorly compared to being able to see microscopically what you were doing. An engineer in Germany developed the operating microscope for a different purpose all together. It came to the United States, and the doctor is St. Louis was using it for fenestration surgery, which is a different operation than we do today. In fact, we don’t do it at all today, but it had required the utilization of microscopic vision. So, I began using it immediately when I came back.
I: On patients, or did you have to practice first?
J: Well we practiced on with cadavers and with animals.
I: I think you told me a story about that. But anyway, we’ll go on. We’ll come back to that someday. So, when did you learn to do the stapedectomy?
J: I said I was involved in head and neck surgery, some of the more difficult head and neck surgery, and I say difficult, but I mean more unusual, not necessarily difficult. But I was involved in that and was actually helping teach a course in maximal facial surgery, reconstructive surgery of the face, plastic surgery, back in Mount Sinai, New York. There was a doctor there on the staff who had accidentally knocked this little stirrup loose. It was frozen in the middle ear, and the patient got their hearing back. He developed a technique where he could do that routinely.
I: What was his name?
J: His name was Sam Rosen. He was on the staff. I went in to watch him operate and sure enough two of the three patients he worked on could hear. I decided this is about the most exciting thing I’d ever seen, so I wanted to get involved in that. I immediately went down to the laboratory and started working on the cadavers and so forth and brought it back to Oklahoma City. The first three patients were done, and then my office was so filled with patients who needed their ears operated on that I haven’t been able to do anything else since that time.
I: Let’s briefly touch on something other things. You and Jodie did a lot of travelling. Was that just for pleasure? Tell me some of the places you’ve been and what you were doing on these overseas trips that you’ve made. Just summarize it.
J: Yes, well of course, Jesus’s ministry was a physical ministry. He touched people and He healed people and that brought Him to their attention, so He healed their souls as well. So, I’ve always been interested in trying to do something to take medicine to those places where it’s needed most. I met several missionaries that were very influential in encouraging me to do things overseas. Then I became related to an organization called ‘MAP,’ Medical Assistance Program.
I: Weren’t you one of the founders of that?
J: Not Medical Assistance Program. Medical Assistance Program had a division later called MAP. That was for drug distribution using pharmaceutical companies that had an overrun of medication and taking that medication and distributing that medication to hospitals and dispensaries all over the world in needy areas. So we got involved in that to the point that we finally started an organization called MAP that distributes drugs and supplies to foreign places of need, disaster areas as well as regular areas, that are serviced by hospitals and Christian dispensaries. A group of us started that back in the late 1950s. It’s been flourishing since that time. We ship approximately $700 million worth of drugs and supplies a year to foreign mission hospitals and places of need.
I: What are some other organizations you’ve helped start?
J: Well due to my entire story it’s a little bit difficult to tell the story quickly. Due to my work with Medical Assistance Program and MAP, my work was seen enough by other doctors that they wanted to join in the effort. So we formed out of the American Academy of Otolaryngology, which has about 12,000 members. We started the program for humanitarian efforts that does this now where we send teams overseas to do certain things: put on conferences, teaching programs, and disaster teams. The Christian Society of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery goes into countries that are in isolation from the rest of the world because of their political stance and so forth. So, I helped form both of those organizations.
I: Okay. You had so many things happen to you in your life. Can you pick out one or two highlights? Maybe awards you’ve gotten or anything like that which has been meaningful to you?
J: Well, I’ve gotten a load of awards and titles and so forth that I didn’t necessarily deserve, but I just happened to be there at the right time and the right place. It was like being at the Battle of Iwo Jima. I really didn’t have much to do with that. I was just there. I’ve been “just there” in a number of situations. When I look back at my long life, I’m amazed at what has happened. I’ve received an awful lot of accolades that I appreciate, but I wonder why I was.
I: Tell me about a few of those.
J: Well the biggest thing I guess that I’m pleased with is the Hall of Fame here, the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. I was inducted into that in 1990. And so, the others within the profession were important in the eyes of our profession but have not been understood too well by the general populace. They wouldn’t—they awarded merit by the American Otologic, and the awards from the British society of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. These awards, I’ve received quite a number of them for reasons that are beyond me but are pleasant to receive.
I: You haven’t talked about your children very much. Tell me a little bit about them.
J: I have four sons, all great guys. Two of them are teachers, one is an audiologist, one is a banker, and that’s the crew. Think there’s—when we all get together, the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren— I’m a great-grandfather. I often say it won’t hurt to be a great-grandfather because you’ll have a title, and you’re ‘great.’ So, I have twenty-seven of us, I believe, when we all get together.
I: And do any of your children have advanced degrees?
J: Yeah, we’re loaded with degrees. They have. It doesn’t always mean that it’s remunerative, you know. But I counted the post-graduate degrees, and I think there’s thirteen of them among the four guys. So they’ve done well from an educational standpoint.
[pause]
J: Time is running out?
I: I think so. Thank you very much for talking to me today.